Todd, Tim and Kellan Cook love Baseball, the Seattle Mariners and trekking around the country to visit stadiums and watch games. These are their stories. #FatherSonBaseball

Hello, 2010 Mariners! (5/11/10)

Since opening day, we’d been looking forward to May 11, 2010: our first Mariners game of the season. Like in 2007 and 2008 , our first Mariners game of the season would take place at Camden Yards.

I wanted to maximize our time with the Mariners so we headed down to Baltimore in time for batting practice. Unfortunately, it started raining as we neared Baltimore. As we entered the centerfield seats, we found the tarp covering the field. No batting pratice.

It was about 5:20 at the time. Because we did not have “season ticket” tickets, we were stuck in CF until 5:30. So we couldn’t go over to the third base foul line where Ichiro was running sprints in the outfield and a couple of Mariners were playing catch.

After about 2 minutes in the seats, Jesus Colome came out to centerfield to grab two baseballs that were sitting out there in the grass. There were a bunch of O’s fans in the first 2 rows of the seats and we were hanging back in about the 10th row. Colome saw us and yelled to get our attention. He then proceeded to throw one of the baseballs nowhere near us. Seriously, while looking me straight in the eye, he managed to throw the ball about 30 feet to our left and about 7 rows below us. One of the O’s fans grabbed it as it ricocheted off some seats. Colome yelled, “Sorry!” and patted himself on the chest as if to say, “my bad.”

Oh, well.

About 2 minutes later, something incredibly cool happened. I’m going to save the complete story for later, but here is the abbreviated version.

Ryan Rowland-Smith came walking through the outfield on his way to the bullpen…

…in that picture, Tim and I were standing at the “T&T” (Tim was on my shoulders) and I noticed Rowland-Smith as he was walking at the “RRS.” The yellow line shows the route he was intending to walk to the Mariners bullpen.

Background Fact No. 2: Over the off-season, I wrote a letter to RRS to (among other things) thank him for being so kind to us in Toronto, and I included with the letter the picture my wife snapped of us with RRS.

Background Fact No. 3: I follow RRS on Twitter where it had recently been implied that he buzzed his hair. Check him out @hyphen18.

So, as he approached the OF wall, I yelled out, “Hey, Ryan, let’s see the new hair!”

He laughed and (without looking over) took off his hat to show me his buzz-cut. Then, as he went through the door in the OF gate, he looked over at me and…

…exclaimed, “Oh, hey, Man!” as he pointed at me. He immediately changed courses (follow the new yellow line above) and came over to chat with us.

I was thinking, “Wow, RRS really likes seeing Mariners fans on the road!” But as he approached, he said, “You wrote me that letter, right?”

To put it mildly, I couldn’t believe it! I wrote him a letter months earlier about an interaction in Toronto and IMMEDIATELY upon seeing us in Baltimore (totally out of context), he recognized us and came right over to chat.

Here he is standing below us…

…and, to once again put it mildly, he came over to chat about something incredibly, amazingly, ridiculously awesome. That’s what I’ll save for later. For now, I will just note that we made plans to meet up later in the season about something I asked him in my letter. Also, I must note that RRS is officially one of the most fan-friendly, coolest dudes ever to wear a major league baseball uniform…hands down.

After chatting with RRS, we waited five more minutes for the rest of the stadium to open (by which point Ichiro was gone), and then we headed over toward the Mariners dugout. And guess who we ran into…

…you got it: Mr. Ryan Rowland-Smith. Although Tim looks sorta “ho-hum’ish” in this picture, its not because he wasn’t happy to get his picture with RRS. It was because he was standing on top of a wet brick wall and he was scared he was going to fall off. RRS is holding him from behind to keep him steady.

We chatted for another minute or two with RRS. And he noticed the T-Shirt I was wearing under my jersey. It was a special shirt that Griffey made for his Mariners teammates during spring training. You can read about it (and how my mom got her hands on one of them during spring training) in our entry Griffey the Prankster. I told RRS that I had my mom send to shirt to me so I could wear it to this game to see if I could manage to get my picture with Griff. However, due to the SleepGate scandal (that had just broken the day before), RRS didn’t think Griff would be out on the field at all before the game.

A few minutes later, I saw Ichiro pop out of the M’s dugout with a bat and walk over to the O’s dugout/clubhouse entrance. So we headed over to the O’s dugout and confirmed with an usher that the M’s would be taking BP in cages back by the O’s clubhouse.

We said hi to most of the guys as they headed over to take BP…

…Lopez said “Hi” to us, but Guti did not. Speaking of Franklin, check out his pant legs before and after hitting.

Adam Moore said hi to us too:

Here is Figgy and a coach, Sweeney and M’s PR guy Tim Hevly (they were talking about SleepGate!)…

…Don Wakamatsu said hello to us, and Ken Griffey, Jr. did too. Unfortunately, that’s the best picture I got of Griff. As he approached, he saw my T-shirt and he said something to me that I couldn’t understand…something odd like, “Oh, so that’s what’s going on here.” In response, I mentioned that he’d given the shirt to my mom at spring training and asked if we could get a picture. He responded as if it was a possibility, but said he had to go hit first. Of course, by the time he finished batting, there were 50 people standing by the dugout. By that point, we decided there was no chance Griff would stop on his way back to the M’s clubhouse so we left to get something to eat.

There was a little raining falling at this point, so we retreated to Section 49…

…and dug into a big pile on nachos:

As we enjoyed our nachos, Mike Sweeney started playing catch with his first basemens glove…

…but he didn’t play first (or at all) in this game.

After our nachos, we headed over to the bullpen to watch Cliff Lee warm up. Here he is on his walk to the bullpen:

And here is the view from the seats right next to the bullpen in section 86:

After Cliff Lee left the bullpen, the relievers huddled together like they do before every game…

…and when they broke apart David Aardsma pointed at me and said to his colleagues, “Look at that guys shirt!” They all got a kick out of seeing a fan wearing one of Griffey’s prank shirts.

By the way, our buddy Jason Phillips is in that blurry picture and he is the guy seated closest to Tim in the picture to the right. It was nice seeing him again. We exchanged a few words several times throughout the day. Its good to have him in the M’s bullpen again this season.

We continued sitting by the bullpen during the first inning, but then it started raining again. We took refuge under cover over by where we’d eaten our nachos. And I got some pictures of Griffey batting in the third inning…

…he ultimately popped out to LF.

And I got some pictures of Ichiro, also batting in the third inning…

…he grounded out to the pitcher.

I took tons of pictures (using my wife’s camera with a sequence feature) of Cliff Lee:

On this pitch, the batter (I think Miguel Tejada) grounded out to Josh Wilson at short stop.

We got some random defensive shots:

After it stopped raining, we headed out to the standing room area in RF…

…where Tim asked for sunflower seeds to make “seed sail boats” in a puddle.

I had to get Tim out of the standing room area pretty quick. It was covered with huge puddles and Tim wanted to jump in every single one. I was envisioning his little toes freezing later in the game inside wet socks.

So, we headed out to the concourse and got an ice cream helmet and a hot chocolate. We grabbed some ice cream seats in section 10 down the 1B foul line:

Pictured at the back of the photo is a guy named Avi who we met before the game. In addition to going to tons of O’s games, Avi reads our blog (and writes one of his own). Thanks, Avi! It was great meeting you.

Here is the view from our ice cream seats in section 10:

At this point (the fifth inning), the score was 0-0 and Cliff Lee had given up only 3 hits.

Ryan Langerhans broke the scoreless tie with a lead off homerun in the fifth. Later in the inning, the M’s scored again when Chone Figgins drew a bases loaded walk.

Here is a shot of Griff hitting in the sixth inning:

Griff eventually drew a walk and came around to score. After six innings, the Mariners led the Orioles 5-0.

From our ice cream seats, we had a great view of Ichiro in RF. In these pictures, Ichi is playing catch between innings with Franklin Gutierrez.

Click on that picture to see it full-sized. In the picture to the left, the rotation of the seems on the ball look pretty cool.

Here is Tim after finishing off his ice cream and hot chocolate:

He absolutely loved the hot chocolate.

As we sat in section 10, I noticed the same guy catch two foul balls straight behind home plate. I decided he should go over there. However, when we arrived behind home plate, we noticed that the ushers were essentially taking the night off. Although there were ushers all around, they were letting people stand in the aisle and sit anywhere they wanted. So, after an usher took our picture…

…we headed down behind the M’s dugout to see if we could get a third out baseball. We never did. But we got some great up close views of our Mariners. Here is Ichiro about to hit a double…

…and about to be stranded on third base in the 7th inning.

And when we got home, I noticed that we’d been on TV while we were sitting in the third row behind Franklin Gutierrez:

After Griff’s final at bat in the 8th inning…

… the crowd gave Griff a warm ovation on his way back to the dugout (it was a fly out to CF (or maybe a deep 2B or SS)).

We’d been sitting in the third row, but between innings Tim would stand in the first row above the dugout…so I snapped this picture of him:

…and in the 8th or 9th inning, we decided to just take the seats up there in the first row. It was crazy how empty the seats were.

Here was the view from the first row:

After giving up only one run and 8 hits in 7.1 innings…

…we cheered Cliff Lee as he left the game in the bottom of the 8th inning. This was his first win as a Mariner.

Ichiro hit another single in the 9th inning…

…but once again he was stranded on base.

It was raining very lightly, so Tim wore my glove has a mask/umbrella…

…which he thought was a great fun.

I mentioned already we didn’t get a third out ball. Oddly, however, we did get a second out ball! Here Tim is with his first ever game used ball (well, it is possible that one of the umpire balls he’s gotten has been game used, but we *know* this one was used in the game):

With one out in the bottom of the ninth and Brandon League pitching, Matt Wieters grounded out to Ryan Langerhans at first base. Langerhans tagged Wieters for the 26th out of the game and then threw the ball around the horn. Somehow, the around the horn attempt failed. I’m not sure what happened. I think that Figgins threw the ball in the dirt to Jose Lopez and it got wet or dirty. For whatever reason, Lopez rolled the ball into foul territory. It ultimately came to rest right in front of us.

We were the only people in the first row behind the Mariners dugout. We were wearing all Mariners gear. Tim’s a cute kid. The ball was directly in front of us. It seemed almost like we were guaranteed to get the ball. And we did. An unidentified Mariner reached over the railing/netting and grabbed the ball off of the warning track, turned around and flipped it right to me.

Maybe two minute later, the Mariners won the game by a final score of 5-1. And Ichi victoriously ran off of the soggy field after high fiving his teammates:

The grounds crew immediately started to put the tarp back on the field:

Our friend, MLBlogger, and Baseball Collector extraordinaire, Zack Hample, was at the game. We’d spent some time with him during pre-game and then met up again after the game. As the Mariners bullpen headed to the dugout, Jesus Colome flipped a ball to Zack and John Wetteland bestowed a second baseball on me and Tim.

It was a great first Mariners game of the season that included (i) a much needed Mariners win, (ii) Cliff Lee’s first win as a Mariner (and his first since the 2009 World Series), (iii) two memorable meetings with Ryan Rowland-Smith, (iv) fun interactions with several players about the Griffey prank shirt, (v) meeting up with some cool MLBloggers, and (vi) Tim’s first game-used baseball.

I already cannot wait to see the Mariners again…next month in San Diego on the Third Annual Cook Grandfather-Father-Son Baseball Roadtrip of 2010! See you there, Mariners!

8 Comments

Awesome game Todd & Tim! Can’t wait to hear about the full detailed interaction with RRS. Do the batting gloves tim’s wearing while eating ice cream have something to do with it? Or are those just replacement ones for the “Diegos”. Joe

I agree with Joe. Awesome game. It was great seeing you guys again, and thanks for the shout-out at the end of the entry. Very cool that you guys were on TV. The sequence feature on the camera is amazing. (Wish I had one.) RSS sounds like a cool dude, but I’m still going with Heath Bell as the coolest of them all…at least from my perspective. Hope to see you guys again soon.

JOE-
Thanks. I can’t wait to share all of the details, but it might be a while before it happens. Nope. The batting gloves don’t have anything to do with it. Those are just Tim’s batting gloves. He was in full Mariners uniform for this game, but you can’t tell because he was bundled up in a sweatshirt and jacket due to the bad weather. One of his Diegos is lost! So he had to go with the real batting gloves…he prefers the Diegos.

ZACK-
I’m sure the “coolest of them all” award has a lot to do with the award-giver’s perspective. From what I’ve read on your blog, HB certainly is a worthy recipient. So, lets hear it for the ballplayers. Unlike how some media outlets like to protray them, a lot of pro baseball players are extremely nice guys who like to help fans make special memories at the ballpark. RRS and HB are definitely two of them.

Is Ken Griffey Jr. getting to old to play? That is what a few were questioning after reports within the Tacoma Tribune surfaced saying that he didn’t pinch hit during that game because he fell asleep after inning 5 within the clubhouse. Teammates on the Seattle Mariners team all say the reviews are false, and that Griffey didn’t fall asleep. They are saying he did not pinch hit that game simply because he wasn’t chosen to pinch hit, not because he was sleeping. All of this leads to the query of him being too old to keep playing ball.

RRS is hilarious. There’s this clip of RRS interviewing Cliff Lee, Ichiro and Griffey when they were featured in ESPN magazine. It’s quite hilarious. They show behind the scene stuff. Pretty funny. And he’s australian. Now THAT is cool.

THONYC-
I imagine Griff may retire after this season. But personally, I’d like to have him to be a Mariner forever…and I guess he will be, in the Hall of Fame.

MIMI-
I saw that RRS clip. It was great stuff. He is very funny, a class act and one of the most fan friendly ball players I have ever run into. In fact, maybe the “most” fan friendly I’ve ever run into.

BRIAN-
1) Good memory. That was pretty funny when Tim tried to say RRS’s name. FYI, regarding the RRS interaction at this game, I will have a new update on it very soon.
2) Thanks. We’ll have to look into those. The one that interests me the most is the Ty Cobb Museum, which coincidentally is on “Cook Street” so it would fit into the Roadtrip quite well.

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